Emily Burningham, with pictures and archive material at the Aldham Robarts Learning Resourse Centre, at JMU Maryland Street _320
“It provides new storage for archives, a research area and a sound booth. The idea is for our collections to be used more. We are promoting the service to researchers and the wider public as well.”
Most of the documents here are comparatively modern, in keeping with the LJMU’s enthusiasm for popular culture.
But some archives date back to the 1820s when the Liverpool Mechanics’ Institute was founded. It grew over the years by absorbing other colleges, leading to the formation of Liverpool Polytechnic in 1970.
There is a particularly good section on the old Liverpool Art School from its beginning in 1905 through to the 1950s.
Liverpool Poly became the John Moores University in 1992, under the Further and Higher Education Act.
A more obscure collection is that of Barry Miles, 65, author, associate of The Beatles and biographer of Paul McCartney. It covers his dealings with the International Times, part-funded by McCartney in 1966, as Europe’s first underground newspaper. The IT carried articles by such luminaries of the alternative culture as William Burroughs, noted for the Naked Lunch and other bizarre writings; John Peel, the Wirral-born DJ; and Allen Ginsberg, the bearded beat poet and philosopher.
The Stafford Beer Collection is one of the most prized in the archive. Beer (1926-2002) was founder of management cybernetics (the study of communication processes and automatic control systems such as computers).
He was appointed honorary professor of organisational transformation at Liverpool Poly in 1989. His collection consists of 200 books and pamphlets with paintings, models, gramophone records and memorabilia.
“The digital repository and the archive collections are gradually overlapping, as the archives are made available digitally,” says Emily, 29. “Some collections, such as the Stafford Beer, are already available digitally and we are working on the others, but there can be copyright issues and things like that.”
Beer was also a children’s author and he worked for the Chilean Government of Salvador Allende before an American-backed coup resulted in the brutal dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.
“Not many people knew about Liddell Hart’s interest in clothes, but his collection came to the Polytech in the 1970s, where he had a connection with the fashion department,” says Emily.
His military collection is with King’s College at the University of London. “In the future, we would like to get together with them and do a joining exhibition showing the two sides of the man.”
The LJMU collection contains works on feminism, the psychology of dress and the social scene and society at the turn of the 19th century. There are drawings by distinguished illustrators such as Charles Dana Gibson, as well as 350 books, scrapbooks, cartoons, poems, newspaper cuttings and 19th- century folders of original coloured fashion plates. In addition to his military writing, Sir Basil was a gifted journalist, interested in sport and popular culture, and among his collection are periodicals of the day.
Of course, archives never seem to end. There is always the demand for new material. “We are very much looking at developing the popular culture side,” says Emily. “We have got the Jon Savage archive, but there is not all that much local material in there, so we are keen to hear from people who were into that scene at the time.
“People are free to approach us on a case by case basis to see if they fit in with the rest of our collections. They would obviously have to be willing for other people to look at them and use them for research. Jon Savage had a connection with our department, he was very keen for it to go where it would be used and accessible. Radio 4 did a programme on fanzines and they came here to look at ours.
“I have been here for just over a year and I am still learning about the collections. One of the great things when researchers come in is that they often know a lot more about the collections than I do.”
Other unusual items in the archive include an almost complete run of the satirical magazine, Punch, and documents from the YMCA.
Details about visiting the department can be made on the website www.lmju.ac.uk/archives or through email on archives@ljmu.ac.uk
But Liverpool is a city of stars and artists who will appreciate the archives of others, but really want to be in their own archive. That could be the future of this historic record.
